wonderful it had been to go from the bitter subzero Maine night to that tropical place in the wink of a maiden's eye. The somehow sad texture of the air, and the silky aromas of frangipani and bougainvillea. She remembered the tremendous light of the setting sun and the rising moon and how, far off, that bell was ringing. That same bell.
Lisey realized that the sound of the riding mower in the Galloways' yard now seemed oddly distant. So was the blat of a passing motorcycle. Something was happening, she was almost sure of it. A spring was winding, a well was filling, a wheel was turning. Maybe the world was not too much with her, after all.
But what if you get over there and it's night? Assuming that what you feel isn't just a combination of narcotics and wishful thinking, what if you get over there and it's night, when the bad things come out? Things like Scott's long boy? Then I'll come back here.
If you have time, you mean.
Yes, that's what I mean, if there's t—
Suddenly, shockingly, the light shining through the lids of her closed eyes changed from red to a dim purple that was almost black. It was as if a shade had been pulled. But a shade wouldn't account for the glorious mixture of smells that suddenly filled her nose: the mixed perfume of all those flowers. Nor could it account for the grass she now felt pricking her calves and naked back.
She'd made it. Gotten over. Come through.
'No,' Lisey said with her eyes still shut—but it was feeble, little more than a token protest.
You know better, Lisey, Scott's voice whispered. And time is short. SOWISA, babyluv.
And because she knew that voice was absolutely right—time was indeed short—Lisey opened her eyes and sat up in her talented husband's childhood refuge.
Lisey sat up in Boo'ya Moon.
6
It was neither night nor day, and now that she was here, she wasn't surprised. She had come just before twilight on her previous two trips; was it any wonder it was just before twilight again?
The sun, brilliant orange, stood above the horizon at the end of the seemingly endless field of lupin. Looking the other way, Lisey could see the first rising arc of the moon—one far bigger than the biggest harvest moon she had ever seen in her life.
That's not our moon, is it? How can it be?
A breeze ruffled the sweaty ends of her hair, and somewhere not too far distant, that bell tinkled. A sound she remembered, a bell she remembered.
You better hurry up, don't you think?
Yes indeed. It was safe at the pool, or so Scott had said, but the way there led through the Fairy Forest, and that was not. The distance was short, but she'd do well to hurry.
She half-ran up the slope to the trees, looking for Paul's marker. At first she didn't see it, then spotted it leaning far over to one side. She didn't have time to straighten the cross…but took the time, anyway, because Scott would have taken the time. She set the silver spade aside for a moment (it had indeed come with her, as had the yellow knitted square) so she could use both hands. There must be weather here, because the single painstakingly printed word—PAUL—had faded to little more than a ghost.
I think I straightened it last time, too, she thought. In '96. And thought I'd like to look for the hypodermic needle, only there was no time.
Nor was there now. This was her third real trip to Boo'ya Moon. The first hadn't been so bad because she'd been with Scott and they'd gone no farther than the broken signpost reading TO THE POOL before returning to the bedroom at The Antlers. The second time, however, in 1996, she'd had to take the path into the Fairy Forest on her own. She couldn't recall what bravery she must have summoned, not knowing how far it was to the pool or what she'd find when she got there. Not that this trip didn't have its own unique set of difficulties. She was topless, her badly gored left breast was starting to throb again, and God only knew what sort of things the smell of her blood might attract. Well, it was too late to worry about that now.
And if something does come at me, she thought, picking up the spade by its short wooden handle, one of those laughers, for instance, I'll just bop it one with Little Lisey's Trusty Maniac Swatter, Copyright 1988, Patent Pending, All Rights Reserved.
Somewhere up ahead, that bell tinkled again. Barefoot, barebreasted, blood-smeared, wearing nothing but a pair of old denim shorts and carrying a spade with a silver scoop in her right hand, Lisey set off toward the sound along the rapidly darkening path. The pool was up ahead, surely no more than half a mile distant. There it was safe even after dark, and she would take off the few clothes she still wore, and wash herself clean.
7
It grew dim very quickly once she was under the canopy of trees. Lisey felt the urge to hurry more strongly than ever, but when the wind stirred the bell again—it was very close, now, and she knew it was hung from a branch by a bit of stout cord—she stopped, struck by a complex overlay of recall. She knew the bell was hung on a piece of cord because she had seen it on her last trip here, ten years ago. But Scott had swiped it long before that, even before they were married. She knew because she had heard it in 1979. Even then it had sounded familiar, in an unpleasant way. Unpleasant because she had hated the sound of that bell long before it had come over here to Boo'ya Moon.
'And I told him,' she murmured, switching the spade to her other hand and brushing back her hair. The yellow square of delight lay over her left shoulder. Around her the sweetheart trees rustled like whispering voices. 'He didn't say much, but I guess he took it to heart.'
She set off again. The path dipped, then rose to the top of a hill where the trees were a little thinner and strong red light shone through them. Not quite sunset yet, then. Good. And here the bell hung, nodding from side to side just enough to produce the faintest chime. It had, once upon a time, sat beside the cash register of Pat's Pizza & Cafe in Cleaves Mills. Not the kind of bell you hit with your palm, the discreet hotel-desk species that went ding! once and then shut up, but a kind of miniature silver school bell with a handle that went ding-a-ling for as long as you wanted to keep on shaking it. And Chuckie G., the cook who was on duty most nights during the year or so Lisey had waitressed at Pat's, had loved that bell. Sometimes, she remembered telling Scott, she heard its annoying silver ding-a-ling in her dreams, along with Chuckie G. bawling, leather-lunged: Order's up, Lisey! Come on, let's hustle! Hungry people! Yes, in bed she had told Scott how much she had hated Chuckie G.'s annoying little bell, in the spring of 1979 it must have been, because not long after that the annoying little bell had disappeared. She'd never associated Scott with its disappearance, not even when she'd heard it the first time she'd been here—too many other things going on then, too much weird input—and he had never said a word about it. Then, in 1996, while searching for him, she had heard Chuckie G.'s long-lost bell again, and that time she had
(let's hustle hungry people order's up)
known it for what it was. And the whole thing had made perfect crackpot sense. Scott Landon had been the man, after all, who thought the Auburn Novelty Shop was the hardy-har capital of the universe. Why wouldn't he have thought it a fine joke to swipe the bell that so annoyed his girlfriend and bring it to Boo'ya Moon? To hang it rah- cheer beside the path for the wind to ring?
There was blood on it last time, the deep voice of memory whispered. Blood in 1996.
Yes, and it had frightened her, but she had pushed on, anyway…and the blood was gone now. The weather that had faded Paul's name from the marker's crosspiece had also washed the bell clean. And the stout length of cord upon which Scott had hung it twenty-seven years before (always assuming time was the same over here) had almost worn away—soon the bell would tumble to the path. Then the joke would be over.
And now intuition spoke to her as powerfully as it ever had in her life, not in words but in a picture. She saw herself laying the silver spade at the foot of the Bell Tree, and she did so without pause or question. Nor did she ask herself why; it looked too perfect lying there at the foot of the old, gnarled tree. Silver bell above, silver spade below. As to why it should be perfect…she might as well ask herself why Boo'ya Moon existed in the first place. She'd thought the spade had been made for her protection this time. Apparently not. She gave it one more look (it was all the time she could afford) and then moved on.
